Mapping Child Labor Laws and Compulsory Education in early 20th C. US
Meghan Cope, Dept. of Geography, University of Vermont, mcope@uvm.edu

Although children have always worked in and alongside their families in various capacities, the 19th c. shift in America toward industrial work involved the dislocation of work outside of the home/farm and a switch from subsistence or trade to waged labor. As manufacturing became less and less based on skill, and more mechanized, children were seen as viable, cheap, and expendable workers. Waves of horror stories of abuse, mutilation, and death of child workers resulted in concomitant waves of public demands for reform. It is notable that the ‘white’ child was the spur for greater concern in the realm of labor, while black children, many of whom were farm laborers, rarely sparked the interest of reformers (Alphonso, 2014).

Geographic Perspectives

Several dimensions of the debates and policies limiting child labor and encouraging schooling have geographic significance:

1. Because child labor laws were only implemented at the state (and sometimes local) level before the National Labor Standards Act (NLSA) of 1938, there was a lot of regional variation based on context of the state’s economic, political, and ethnic/racial characteristics.  
2. The state-by-state initiation of child labor laws and compulsory schooling happened against a backdrop of efforts by reformers to create federal-level policy, meaning that there are scale issues here. Reformers repeatedly proposed legislation that was passed by Congress only to have it rejected by the Supreme Court as ‘unconstitutional’. Then, in 1924 both Houses passed the Child Labor Amendment to the US Constitution giving Congress “the “power to limit, regulate, and prohibit the labor of persons under 18 years old” (quoted in Fliter, 2018, p. 141); the CLA was never ratified by three quarters of states but it was preempted by the NLSA in 1938. To this day, compulsory schooling is legislated at the state level.
3. One of the flash-points of child labor law was in border areas between states with higher levels of protection for children and those with looser laws. For example, one reformer  bemoaned the situation of the “Pittsburgh District” of glass-making industries: “Ohio has a fourteen year age limit for the employment of children, Pennsylvania a thirteen year limit, West Virginia a twelve year limit. Ohio prohibits the employment of children under sixteen at night, Pennsylvania permits the employment at night of children of thirteen, while West Virginia permits children twelve years old to work at night.” (Owen Lovejoy, National Child Labor Committee, 1905, p. 47)
4. The rhetoric of both reformers and their opponents frequently called on images and ideals of rights, patriotism, and ‘the nation’. For example, one reformer wrote: “we are agitating and striving more and more, not only to save the children from the wrong kind of work at the wrong time and under wrong conditions, but at the same time to prepare them for the right kind of work at the right time and under right conditions that the citizens of to-morrow may work for and be worthy of the highest ideals of the republic (emphasis added, Ben Lindsey, National Child Labor Committee, 1905, p. 101)
5. The practices of working, schooling, and experiencing the rapid changes in economic and family life of the early 20th C. meant many children’s everyday spaces were also changing. Children experienced industrial work-spaces such as the factory floor, different kinds of living arrangements, the expansion of the playground movement in cities (Gagen, 2000), and the rise of danger in the streets with the coming of automobiles.

Copyright Meghan Cope 2019

Timeline of Key Events

Bibliography

Scholarly Publications:

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Reports, Proceedings, and Period References:

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Anderson, N. L. 1905. Child Labor Legislation and the Methods of its Enforcement: The Southern States, Addresses at the First Annual Meeting of the NCLC, NYC. New York: NCLC, pp. 77-93.

Ensign, F. C. 1921. Compulsory School Attendance and Child Labor. Iowa City, IA: The Athens Press. Reprinted in American Education: Its Men, Ideas, and Institutions, 1969, New York: Arno Press and The New York Times.

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Hand, W. H. 1914. The Need of Compulsory Education in the South, Compulsory School Attendance. US Bureau of Education Bulletin No. 2; Washington: Government Printing Office.

Johnson, E. S. 1935. Child Labor Legislation, in Brandeis, E. and J. R. Commons (eds.) History of Labor in the United States, 1896-1932. New York: Macmillan.  

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Lovejoy, O. R. 1905. The Test of Effective Child Labor Legislation, Addresses at the First Annual Meeting of the NCLC, NYC. New York: NCLC, pp.45-52.

McKelway, A. J. 1905. Child Labor in Southern Industry, Addresses at the First Annual Meeting of the NCLC, NYC. New York: NCLC, pp.16-22.

McDowell, J. R. 1909. The Difficulties of Child-Labor Legislation in a Southern State, The Child Workers of the Nation: Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Conference, Chicago, IL. New York: NCLC, pp. 166-171.

NCLC (National Child Labor Committee) 1928. Child Labor Facts, Publication #343. New York: NCLC.

NCLC (National Child Labor Committee) 1938. Child Labor Facts, Publication #372. New York: NCLC.

Plessy v. Ferguson. 1896. Text available at https://www.loc.gov/item/usrep163537/

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